


A Houseguest

by midoriverte



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Hidekaneweek2016, M/M, day 4: taking home a new pet, hidekaneweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 02:49:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7873237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midoriverte/pseuds/midoriverte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hidekane week day 4: Taking home a new pet</p><p>Haise knew his quiet night in would be too good to last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Houseguest

Haise was having a pleasant evening. It was pouring rain outside, and it was chilly, but that meant it was the perfect weather for putting on his pyjamas, curling up with a good book, a cup of coffee-

His phone vibrated aggressively, Hide’s name showing on the display. With a heavy sigh, Haise answered the call.

“What is it, Hide? It’s eleven at night!” Haise asked with a mix of exasperation and trepidation.

“That’s still early, you’re just an old man,” Hide countered. Haise could hear the rain pounding even through the phone, Hide was definitely outside.

“What did you want?” Haise prompted. “If you’re calling me to bring you an umbrella again, the answer is no-”

“No, it’s not that” Hide said quickly. “Does your apartment building allow pets?”

“Y-yes?” Haise said, nonplussed.

“Good, I’ll be there in like fifteen minutes!”

“Wait- no, Hide what have you done?” Haise demanded. Hide had already hung up.

Haise ran his hand through his already-messy hair and thought that, despite his protests to the contrary, if Hide had actually been calling about the umbrella again, he would have brought it to him.

He buzzed Hide into the building fifteen minutes later as promised. He heard Hide’s forceful knock at the door and opened it with the unimpressed expression he had been practicing.

Hide was completely soaking wet. His bleached blonde hair plastered to his head. He had his bright green rain jacket with him, but it was covering the top of a rather beat-up cardboard box.

“What have you done?” Haise demanded again, crossing his arms to add to his huffy effect.

Hide grinned sheepishly. Haise’s heart skipped a beat, but he pushed that feeling down to where he could ignore it.

“Can I come in?” Hide still smiled that stupid cute smile and it was making it very difficult for Haise to be angry at him.

Haise stepped aside reluctantly.

Hide put the box down on the table and removed his rain jacket with a flourish.

Inside the box was a tiny, wet, dirty looking kitten. Shivering in the cold despite Hide’s attempts to line the box with newspapers to keep him warm.

“I found him,” Hide said.

Haise glared at him.

“What? I couldn’t just leave him!” Hide said defensively.

“I know,” Haise sighed. Aren’t there any shelters around here?”

“They’re all full!”

“And I take it your apartment doesn’t allow pets?”

“Nope.”

“And I get saddled with it because…?”

“Not _saddled_ ,” Hide protested. “Just… keep him safe for a few days until we can find him a good home?”

Haise sighed deeply. “You know I’m not going to say no.”

“I know,” Hide said. “You can’t resist taking care of anything small and pathetic.”

As though trying to emphasize how small and pathetic he was, the kitten meowed the tiniest squeak of a meow Haise had ever heard. He was still shivering from being wet and scared, and Haise begrudgingly felt his heart melt.

He looked up to see Hide smirking at him.

“Shut up,” Haise grumbled.

Hide just said, “Now, who’s going to help me give kitty a bath?” As though there was anyone else in the room who could help him bathe the cat.

“I’ll do it, you might as well go shower and change out of your wet clothes. I don’t want you getting sick.”

Hide looked confused. “I don’t have any clothes to change into?”

Haise took the box from him and turned towards the sink, which he hoped was a good kitten-washing location.

“Just borrow some of my pyjamas, you might as well stay the night here so you don’t have to go out in the rain.”

He prayed that Hide couldn’t see the back of his ears turning red.

“Oooh, sleepover!” Hide said in a voice that was somehow both sarcastically enthusiastic and actually enthusiastic.

Haise rolled his eyes.

Half an hour later, Haise had a very fluffy black and white kitten wrapped in a towel like a baby. It was purring gently and Haise pet his ears awkwardly, not wanting to disturb it in case it was sleeping but also unsure if cats could purr and sleep at the same time. He had never actually had a pet before.

Hide walked into the room, his freshly-washed blonde hair was just as fluffy as the cat’s fur. Haise’s pyjamas hung loosely on him.

“You know your clothes are bigger than you’d think,” Hide teased. “Must be all those bulging muscles you’re hiding from me”, he added with a wink.

The shirt was certainly hanging loosely off Hide, exposing his collarbone and a bit of shoulder in a way that appealed to Haise both as a ghoul and as someone with a desperate crush on Hide.

Shaking that embarrassing and shameful thought from his head, Haise rather unnecessarily said, “I washed the cat.”

“I see that,” Hide said. “Did you sustain any injuries?” he asked as he moved to sit down on the couch beside Haise.

“No, he was surprisingly well-behaved,” Haise said as Hide scratched the cat’s ears gently. “Probably because he knew that he was being saved.”

“You’re so cute,” Hide crooned. Haise’s heart leapt for an instant until he realized he was talking to the cat.

“Thanks for helping me with this,” Hide said.

“It’s no problem,” Haise said absently, watching as Hide pet the cat and crooned at it.

“Well I mean, I’d say me dropping in on you with a cat and then staying at your place overnight is a problem…”

Haise wanted to say _I’d do anything for you_. But instead he just shook his head vaguely.

“Should we feed him?” Hide asked.

“What do you feed a kitten?” Haise asked.

“No idea, milk?”

“I thought that was actually bad for them…”

“If we water it down? Maybe a can of tuna?”

“It seems too small for solid food,” Haise said dubiously. “And do you have tuna and milk on you?”

Hide frowned “Don’t you- _oh_ ,” realization dawned on his face. “Right. The ghoul thing.”

“Yeah. That thing.”

“Sorry,” Hide said. “Sure you don’t have anything? You do have a fridge.”

“We can check,” Haise said, gently putting the kitten down on the couch. He decided not to add that the only reason he ever kept human food was for when Hide came over.

Haise opened the fridge to reveal that it was mostly empty except for a carton of milk, some wilted lettuce, and brown paper packages.

“I’m guessing I really don’t want to know what’s in those packages?” Hide asked.

“No,” Haise said. He felt a little uncomfortable having his ghoul nature discussed so openly. It wasn’t just that years of being hunted by the CCG had engrained in him an instinct to hide (even though it was no longer illegal to be a ghoul, old habits did die hard), but that he was worried that one day it would suddenly dawn on Hide that he was friends with a monster.

Hide, for his part, looked completely unperturbed as he reached in for the milk.

“Well, at least you have milk!” Hide said cheerfully. He opened it up and his face fell.

“Nope, you have real bad yogurt,” he said, practically throwing it back into the fridge.

They heard a rather pitiful meow from the couch.

“He’s hungry!” Hide cried in distress.

Haise sighed.

“We can look up what to feed him, and then I can go out and buy it. I’m sure there’s a place around here that’s still open,” Haise said with a sigh.

“I’ll go get it!” Hide argued.

“You already got soaked once tonight,” Haise said firmly. “I’ll do it.”

It turned out that there was something called “kitten milk”, and there was thankfully a store nearby that sold it. He also got talked into buying a small baby bottle to feed it.

Which is how he ended up sitting at a kitchen table at midnight on a Friday, bouncing a kitten gently in his arms as he crooned at it like a new parent would to a baby.

“Aw, looks like someone was hungry,” he said as the kitten lapped at the milk greedily.

“You’re so cute,” Hide said again.

“Of course it is, all kittens are cute,” Haise said, rolling his eyes.

“I was talking about you,” Hide said, raising his eyebrows.

“M-me?”

“You,” Hide said.

“Why?”

Hide grinned, “Dude, you’re treating this kitten I dropped on you an hour ago like it’s your baby. That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Haise’s face was suddenly very warm.

“Well, uh, thanks, Haise mumbled.

“I think the cat’s asleep now,” Hide said, oblivious to the maelstrom of fluttering butterflies he had just created in Haise’s stomach.

Haise looked down to see that the cat was resting peacefully.

“I made a little bed for it!” Hide said proudly. “I found a nice clean box in your closet and lined it with towels to keep him warm.”

“My _good_ towels?”

“Well I wasn’t going to use the crappy towels,” Hide defended. “Hasn’t the poor little thing been through enough?”

“Hmm,” Haise mumbled.

“Speaking of, I think we need to take him to the vet. One of his eyes looks like it’s…puffy.”

Haise took a closer look at it. Now that Hide mentioned it, one of his eyes did seem sort of swollen.

He sighed and said, “I guess we should, yes.”

“We should name him!”

“Hide! If we name him, we’ll just get attached to him!”

Hide looked at Haise, with the kitten cradled protectively in his arms and a baby bottle in hand.

“Hmm,” Hide said.

“Now, let’s put him to bed and go to bed ourselves.”

“Okay,” Hide said with a small laugh. “Should I sleep on the couch?”

“W-well,” Haise started, although every part of his brain was screaming at him not to say what he was thinking of saying, his heart (and maybe some other parts of him) overrode that quite easily. “If you want, you could just sleep in my bed.”

Hide opened his mouth to reply and then closed it.

“M-my couch is uncomfortable!” Haise added.

“You’re sure it’s okay?” Hide asked.

“Y-yeah,” Haise wished his heart would stop hammering so hard. “I mean, you’re already wearing my pyjamas so you might as well sleep in my bed too.”

Haise hated himself for saying that. But Hide just grinned and said:

“I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I had some more ideas that I didn't have the time to write, so I'm hoping to continue this eventually. :)


End file.
